Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy

by Alex Mar Narrated by Alex Mar

Overview

“Alex Mar's bold yet sensitive account of one of America's youngest death row inmates-and the people whose lives she forever changed-is intimately reported, deeply moving, and unforgettable.” -Robert Kolker, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road

“An absorbing work of social history and a story about the mystery and miracle of forgiveness. This is a book of awesome scope, and it deserves to be read with attention.” -Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize-winning author of the Wolf Hall trilogy

A masterful, revelatory work of literary non-fiction about a teenage girl's shocking crime-and its extraordinary aftermath

On a spring afternoon in 1985 in Gary, Indiana, a fifteen-year-old girl kills an elderly woman in a violent home invasion. In a city with a history of racial tensions and white flight, the girl, Paula Cooper, is Black, and her victim, Ruth Pelke, is white and a beloved Bible teacher. The press swoops in.

When Paula is sentenced to death, no one decries the impending execution of a tenth grader. But the tide begins to shift when the victim's grandson Bill forgives the girl, against the wishes of his family, and campaigns to spare her life. This tragedy in a midwestern steel town soon reverberates across the United States and around the world-reaching as far away as the Vatican-as newspapers cover the story on their front pages and millions sign petitions in support of Paula.

As Paula waits on death row, her fate sparks a debate that not only animates legal circles but raises vital questions about the value of human life: What are we demanding when we call for justice? Is forgiveness an act of desperation or of profound bravery? As Bill and Paula's friendship deepens, and as Bill discovers others who have chosen to forgive after terrible violence, their story asks us to consider what radical acts of empathy we might be capable of.

In Seventy Times Seven, Alex Mar weaves an unforgettable narrative of an act of violence and its aftermath. This is a story about the will to live-to survive, to grow, to change-and about what we are willing to accept as justice. Tirelessly researched and told with intimacy and precision, this book brings a haunting chapter in the history of our criminal justice system to astonishing life.

Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly

★ 01/02/2023

Journalist Mar (Witches of America) delivers an engrossing study of faith, forgiveness, and justice centered on the 1985 murder of a great-grandmother in Gary, Ind. Fifteen-year-old Paula Cooper, one of four teenage girls who invaded the home of Bible teacher Ruth Pelke and stole her car, was sentenced to death for the crime. Mar details the physical abuse Cooper endured from her father, her mother’s attempt to kill herself and her two daughters, and Cooper’s experiences being “passed from stranger to stranger” in foster homes and emergency shelters in the three years leading up to the murder. Juxtaposed with Cooper’s volatile childhood are snapshots of Pelke, who had taught one of the teenage girls and driven her to church. Other profile subjects include Jack Crawford, the prosecutor who chose to pursue the death penalty against Cooper, who confessed to stabbing Pelke more than 30 times; Bill Pelke, Ruth’s grandson, who publicly forgave Cooper for the crime; and Earline Rogers, a state legislator who spearheaded efforts to exempt juveniles younger than 16 from the death penalty in Indiana. Though Cooper’s sentence was commuted and she was released from prison in 2013, she died in an apparent suicide less than two years later. Deeply reported and vividly written, this is a harrowing and thought-provoking portrait of crime and punishment. Photos. Agent: Sarah Burnes, Gernert Co. (Mar.)

From the Publisher

A compassionate account of mercy for a teenage girl on death row . . . [this book] demonstrate[s] the impact that great true crime can have . . . giv[ing] a full accounting not just of the details of the crimes but of the lives of those affected by violence, exploring whether the legal system can truly provide justice.” —Sarah Weinman, The New York Times

“Haunting . . . You’ll find yourself lying awake in the small hours, turning it over and over in your mind . . . Seventy Times Seven is a book about the promise and limits of empathy—the ways in which we see one another, and the ways in which we cannot . . . Seventy Times Seven gives readers an unflinching glimpse into brutality, pain, loneliness, rage and revenge, and asks if regret, compassion, mercy and forgiveness can be enough to bridge the gulfs of race, class and ideology that so often divide us . . . Full of questions and painful ambiguities—and Mar is courageous enough to leave most of her questions unanswered.” —Rosa Brooks, The Washington Post

“Riveting . . . [Mar] chronicles Cooper’s case with sensitivity and addresses challenges of juvenile punishment with insight . . . A probing and moving book.” —The Wall Street Journal

“Mar’s narrative is probing, careful, elegant, and sure; each page yields a new dimension of the story and requires us to reengage with the facts anew. This is a complicated tale, gracefully told, that will engross readers for years to come.” —New York Magazine (The Best Books of 2023)

“[An] intimate and highly sympathetic account. Anyone moved by Bryan Stevenson’s memoir, Just Mercy, will find Mar’s book a compelling companion piece on the issue of crime and punishment in America. It’s a story that beautifully marries tragedy and hope, illuminating some of the worst and best of which human beings are capable.” —BookPage

“In the hands of a less capable journalist and writer, the nuances of Paula Cooper’s death penalty trial, the examination of her previous, horrifying home life, and the very question of what constitutes justice might all become too much for one book to bear the weight of, but Alex Mar never falters. Instead, she simply digs deeper, talks to more people, and ultimately gets as close to the truth as she possibly can through dogged research and clear, concise storytelling. The result, Seventy Times Seven: A True Story of Murder and Mercy, stands as not only riveting but also as a meditation on a broken justice system, the idea of forgiveness when the circumstances are so grim, and the nature of justice itself.” —Shondaland

“The only way this country will ever free itself of the moral stain that is capital punishment is through stories like the one Mar tells in Seventy Times Seven: of individual compassion and moral courage.” —Jonny Diamond, Literary Hub

“An engrossing study of faith, forgiveness, and justice . . . Deeply reported and vividly written, this is a harrowing and thought-provoking portrait of crime and punishment.” —Publishers Weekly fistarred review)

“Mar’s expansive, humanitarian legal history is also an investigation of belief . . . This is an unsettling look at the recent past and a profoundly affecting read.” —Booklist fistarred review)

“A probing examination of the intersection of race, crime, and punishment.” —Kirkus

“A tautly written, wholly empathic work that will stay with you long after you’ve read it.” —Vol. 1 Brooklyn

“Alex Mar’s bold yet sensitive account of one of America’s youngest death row inmates—and the people whose lives she forever changed—is intimately reported, deeply moving, and unforgettable.” —Robert Kolker, New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road

“In Seventy Times Seven, Alex Mar has reached back to the 1980s to explore a shocking murder case. But this book is not only about crime and punishment; it raises urgent questions that are'common'to all of us—about how children develop into social beings, about who is capable of rehabilitation, and about how we mend the damage that runs through generations. Deeply researched and deeply felt, Seventy Times Seven is an absorbing work of social history and a story about the mystery and miracle of forgiveness. It is a book of awesome scope, and it deserves to be read with attention.” —Hilary Mantel, Booker Prize—winning author of the Wolf Hall trilogy

“Seventy Times Seven is a devastating and essential book, a meticulous deconstruction of the social fears and personal calculations that built and still uphold the death penalty in America. A brilliant reporter and empathetic narrator, Alex Mar has written the truest kind of crime drama, unafraid of rendering our narratives about justice less comforting.” —Sierra Crane Murdoch, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Yellow Bird

“Alex Mar’s Seventy Times Seven is a monumental achievement, probing the toughest questions that all nonfiction crime narratives must ask and emerging with a story of profound moral inquiry, the limits of where we can find justice, and the power of compassion, often in the most surprising quarters. When we wish to understand ourselves and society at our worst and at our best, look no further than this book.” —Sarah Weinman, author of The Real Lolita and Scoundrel

Library Journal

02/17/2023

Mar (Witches of America) interweaves historical background into the narrative to tell the story of four Black girls, ages 14–16, who skipped school and murdered 78-year-old Ruth Pelke, a white woman, during a burglary in Gary, IN, in 1985. The girls were soon captured, and DA Jack Crawford requested the death penalty. At that time, Indiana law allowed the death penalty for those as young as 10 years old. Paula Cooper, 15, believed to be the ring leader, received the death sentence, whereas the others received 25-, 35-, and 60-year prison terms. The book details how Pelke's grandson Bill, who once favored the death penalty, broke from the family, became Cooper's ardent supporter, and publicly opposed the death penalty. Cooper's young age provoked an international crusade to commute her death sentence; it eventually was commuted in 1988, after the Supreme Court ruled in Thompson v. Oklahoma that states cannot execute juveniles under the age of 16. Cooper eventually served more than 26 years in prison before being released and died by suicide two years later. VERDICT The book's title is a biblical reference about forgiveness. Well-written, well-researched, and worth being added to a true-crime collection.—Michael Sawyer

Kirkus Reviews

2023-01-25
A brutal murder ends in reconciliation—at least of a sort.

“Where’s the money, bitch?” According to court records, that’s what Paula Cooper, a Black teenager, shouted as she stabbed an elderly White woman in Gary, Indiana, in 1985. Arrested the next day, Cooper entered a system of juvenile justice that, as Mar notes, is overwhelmingly populated by minority members, as was true in the case of the Black perpetrator and her three accomplices. The judge agonized: “He says he’s been asked many times over the past few months for the age at which juveniles should be charged as adults, and he does not know the answer.” Two accomplices received terms of 35 and 60 years, and the third, who did not enter the house but essentially organized the crime, was sentenced to 25 years in a plea deal. Cooper, at 15, became the youngest woman ever sentenced to death. Multiple appeals followed, even as public sentiment in the Reagan era turned increasingly in favor of the death penalty. Meanwhile, the victim’s grandson, at first aching for vengeance, gradually took the view that capital punishment was wrong and began a long, lonely campaign to fight against it, including holding vigils at executions. Mar’s story has a redemptive conclusion of sorts: Cooper was released on parole after serving nearly 20 years after the grandson petitioned the judge to do so. Against the grandson’s hope, however, she found no way to “reenter society.” In the Trump era, the court system has turned actively pro–death penalty, with Attorney General William Barr reviving federal executions and the conservative Supreme Court ruling, in one case, that in cases of homicide, sentences of life without parole are permissible even for a juvenile, “without the need to rule on whether that young person has a hope of rehabilitation.”

A probing examination of the intersection of race, crime, and punishment.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940174915688
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	03/28/2023
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

One

The Care of Children

One house of the many that make up a city: a pale-yellow house, an hour after sunup in Gary, Indiana. A woman lives here, on Wisconsin Street, with her two daughters. Rhonda is twelve, her sister Paula is nine. It is 1979.

Their mother-her name is Gloria-hustles them outside into the morning light, and then into the dark of the garage and the back seat of her red Chevy Vega. The girls are very young, and they are powerfully tired. They understand what their mother intends to do-she has kept them up all night softly talking then shouting then whimpering to them about where they'll be traveling together, about what must happen next-and they are no longer resistant.

With her daughters inside, Gloria tugs at the garage door until it slides down to meet the concrete. She slips into the driver's side, rolls down the windows, turns the key in the ignition: the engine gives off a deep, thrumming sound. Then she waits for them to close their eyes and fall into that steady rhythm; she can see their faces in the rearview mirror, small and brown and perfect. All three are still, their limbs grown heavy as if underwater.

The engine continues running; the minutes accumulate; the air thickens.

Outside the garage, the neighborhood is awakening. Inside the garage, the girls are passing into an unnatural sleep.

What Rhonda remembers next: she and Paula laying side by side on their bottom bunk, not knowing how they got there. They have not exited the world. Gloria is leaning over them, her daughters: they will be all right, she says. Just before leaving.

Rhonda does not know how much time has passed before she is able to move her body. She rises slowly. A letter is taped to the door, from their mother: She is finishing what she set out to do. Rhonda rushes to the kitchen and calls her aunt, who tells her to run, get their neighbor. Through the window, she thinks she sees exhaust seeping out from under the garage door, into the bright daylight.

Mr. Hollis drags Gloria out of the garage and lays her on her back on the lawn. He drops to his knees and with elbows locked, hand over hand, pushes hard on her chest. Again and again. The neighbor across the street, a nurse, rushes over and takes her turn trying to pump breath back into Gloria's body.

The ambulance arrives, and the fire department, and a medic becomes the third person in line to tend to Gloria. By now, Paula is standing outside, watching. Rhonda sees her younger sister grow hysterical at the sight of this stranger bearing down on their mother's chest, and Gloria not responding, not responding.

Something Rhonda will not forget: no one examines them, the girls. The firemen, the medics-no one so much as takes their pulse. When Gloria is swept off to the hospital, the sisters go stay with their aunt. When after a week their mother checks herself out early, no one asks any questions; when she comes to retrieve her daughters, no one stops her.

For years, Rhonda has said that she does not know what transformed her sister. But now she tells me, as if untangling the question aloud, that this was it. This must have been the start of a change in Paula. "Because you have to understand: We were all supposed to have been dead. That's what we were expecting, that's what we were hoping." But they were still alive. And what now-another day in the yellow house?

The house stands in Marshalltown, a subdivision of the Pulaski neighborhood, integrated by Black working-class families in the 1950s. Theirs is one of a collection of streets lined with neat, ranch-style homes, single-family, with small front yards.

About a mile west of here is Midtown, or the Central District, once the sole, clearly delineated quarter of Gary's entire Black community. And a mile into Midtown is Broadway, which runs north-south the entire length of the city. That four-lane street leads you north into downtown, where the architecture collapses time: an ornate brick department store, now boarded up; a children's clothing store, now boarded up; the former headquarters of a major regional bank, its Greco-Roman facade left to grow tarnished. People still shop here, but more and more, steel accordion gates have been pulled shut across entrance ways and display windows and left that way. More and more, businesses have closed up or moved south, into the malls of the white suburbs.

Broadway's final destination in the north, at the edge of downtown, is the Gary Works, along the southern shoreline of Lake Michigan. The United States Steel Corporation dominates the waterfront, the plant's rows of smokestacks darkening the air overhead; at night the compound glows red. At this moment, thousands rotate shifts here day and night, unaware that, within the next three years, more than two thirds of them will lose their jobs. About 150,000 people live in this town, most of them linked to the mill. It is the reason the city exists.

Just three generations ago, this area was all sand and swampland, a great expanse of nothing thirty miles from Chicago. It was the start of the 1900s, and the state of Indiana, shaped like a boot pointed West, was very rural and very white, its nearly one hundred counties distinguished by the sheer number of railway lines crisscrossing through it. Lake County, some six hundred square miles at its northwest corner, pressed against the shoreline. The county's most desolate stretch, along the water, was used as a private hunting and fishing club by Chicago's wealthier men, and as a hideaway by that city's fugitives. Winding rivers and tributaries, dense marshland, the rough terrain of the dunes-territory to pass through. It was here that U.S. Steel decided to buy nine thousand acres. They leveled the dunes, filled a half mile stretch of the lake, packed the marshes, rerouted part of the Grand Calumet River, dug out a mile-long ship canal, and began construction of the mill itself, with its massive blast furnaces and coke ovens. Within a handful of years, the Gary Works was completed, along with the beginnings of a company town.

In the building of every city, decisions are made as to who gets what. These decisions are built into the layout of the streets, the digging of trenches, the laying down of water pipes and sewer drains, the doling out of permits and licenses, the paving of roads and the rolling out of sidewalks, the planning and funding of schools and parks. There are many accidents along the way, the unintended aftershocks of these choices, but a city's framework, the bones of it, is laid down with intent. Some groups of residents are'protect'd and served, while others are left isolated and exposed. This is the tension underlying all American cities, and in Gary this tension was extreme from the start.


Of the two sisters in the yellow house, Paula is a much gentler girl, a wuss, a baby, the biggest chicken-that’s how her sister thinks of her—and Rhonda is the boss. They live around the corner from Bethune Elementary, where they’re both enrolled, a quick run from door to door. Which is helpful, because Paula gets into fights after school. That is, she starts something she can’t finish, and then she races back home with two or three angry girls in pursuit, and she runs them toward her big sister, and Rhonda has to do the fighting. Every time. Paula gets into it with someone, and Rhonda has to come swinging, and some girl ends up yanking at her long hair and making her look a mess. Paula, always a joker, stands in their doorway laughing. This works out fine for her-until one day their grandmother comes to stay with them, and now Rhonda has a witness. Their grandma sees this drama unfold out the front door three days in a row, and on the fourth she pulls Rhonda aside and pushes Paula out the door. “Get your butt out there and fight! Rhonda’s not going to help you today. Rhonda been saving you all week!”

Paula can't fight, but she can dance. Whenever it's just the two of them in the house, they play music all the time. Rhonda has a Jackson 5 record from the back of a cereal box, and they play it over and over. Paula tries to teach her sister new moves, but it's a crack-up. "No, Rhonda, the beat is over here. It's over here. Come over here, Rhonda, and get on the beat!"

They like the neighborhood: so many kids around, riding their bikes after school or playing on the block. But the sisters are kept apart from the others. No one is allowed over to the house, and they are not allowed to visit other kids' homes; they can only sit inside. And so they make up games that can be played with friends from their doorway.

Most days and nights, Rhonda is expected to babysit Paula while their mother works long hours as a lab technician at Methodist Hospital and their father is nowhere to be found. She gets Paula up and dressed for school; she makes biscuits for breakfast; she sets a time for homework and cooks dinner. She is made to play the role of the other mother, and she makes sure Paula knows her rank, even if it means tearing through the house fighting. But sometimes they stop playing mother-daughter and have girl time, fix each other's hair, sit in front of the TV together and binge on cake and cookies. Sometimes Rhonda lets Paula turn the dial to The Three Stooges because it's her favorite. She loves watching those grown men squeeze into phone booths, smack each other in the forehead, fall down a set of stairs, get a pie in the face. Rhonda thinks of it as ignorant stuff, but it lights her sister up.

The girls were both born in Chicago. That's where their mother and her family are from, and where she met Ron Williams, the man she started dating right after high school. About a year later, she became pregnant, and the two got engaged. But then something went wrong. The idea was to have a wedding quickly-but when they got down to making the arrangements, they began to argue, and the arguments unfolded at a pitch that did not make sense. Ron started to worry that Gloria might be unstable, and he decided to wait. They broke up; they got back together; they did it all over again. By the time she gave birth to Rhonda, Gloria seemed so erratic to Ron, so forgetful and volatile, that he wanted to sue for full custody. But when he told his own mother, she could not condone him taking a woman's child away. And so he let it go.

Within a few months, Gloria did marry-a man named Herman Cooper. She convinced him to raise Rhonda as his own; if Ron wanted to visit with the girl, they would simply tell people he was her uncle. Soon they had Paula, and she and Rhonda might as well believe they were full sisters.

When the girls were eight and five, the family packed up and moved to Gary. They rented a small three-bedroom house in Marshalltown. Herman did odd jobs as a mechanic, and Gloria found work at the hospital. Over the years, Herman became quick to anger at the smallest things-if the girls were slow to take out the garbage or wash the dishes. If they were in any way out of step with his moods, he was within his rights to hit them hard. That was fair punishment in their home.

The yellow house is directly across from a small storefront church, New Testament Baptist. After they settled in, Gloria ordered the girls to start heading there for Sunday school, though neither she nor their father had any plans to join. Rhonda and Paula were too young to choose their own church or faith or to make any personal decisions about God, but they did as they were told, and it got them out of the house. On the day of the girls' baptism, Gloria decided not to attend. One of the church mothers stood in for her.

Herman disappears for weeks at a time; he comes and goes when he feels like it. When he is home, he repeatedly beats the girls-with an electrical cord or a belt or his fists. He calls to them in their bedroom and orders them to come out with all their clothes off-that way, he says, they'll really feel it when he whips them. Gloria is drinking heavily. On the occasions when she locks him out, Herman breaks in. Late at night, Paula and Rhonda listen to their shouting through the wall. When neither of their parents is home, the girls put the chaos out of their minds and live what Rhonda will later call their "imaginary type of life."

Gloria and Herman make a habit of separating then getting back together. It is during one of their breakups that Gloria, in the early morning, leads the girls out to the garage, ushers them into the car, and runs the engine. And it is months later that Rhonda learns Herman is not her father, that her father is "Uncle" Ron, a nice man who's come by a few times. The abuse has been focused on her, and now Rhonda thinks she understands: Herman treats her this way because she is not actually his child; he does not feel obliged to be careful with her. She packs a few things and leaves. She is thirteen years old.

Gloria reports her missing, and Rhonda is picked up by the police and returned to the house. This happens again and again. By leaving home, she becomes, in legal terms, a status offender: a category that's broadly defined-truancy, "immoral conduct," "incorrigibility"-a label a juvenile court judge can use, more or less, as they'd like. Eventually a judge sends her to the juvenile detention center-what has become a catchall remedy for children who act out. She spends months in the institution, a massive sterile building, packed in with kids who have done far worse. And then she is sent back to her mother.

Eventually, as Rhonda plans yet another exit, Paula begs to come along. Begs her. And so this time, in the middle of the night, they set out together.

Rhonda feels terrible about it: there's a big difference between being on her own and bringing a ten-year-old with her. Paula needs to be taken care of, and soon it's starting to rain. Rhonda spots an abandoned house (there are more and more in Gary), and they find a way inside and fall asleep. The next day, they make it to the home of a friend, who says their parents are looking for them. Rhonda refuses to return; she wants to file a report with the police. A pair of officers arrive, sit with the girls, take down what they have to say. Then they load them into the patrol car and drive them back to Gloria's. The court mandates that the entire Cooper family take part in family therapy-but the parents refuse. So the girls attend sessions alone. And Gloria and Herman are never ordered before the judge.

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